Micro Bead Bird Embellishment

On one of my last pieces for FOG, I created a beaded bird. If you look at the photo, you will see that the bird is outlined in black and that micro beads fill in the areas between. The black outline of the bird is actually a sticker that I picked up at a scrap booking store. Although there are many of these types of stickers, some in black and some in white, the one I used came from a sheet of birds (see photo), and was designed by Elizabeth Craft Designs (#2350). This bird sticker is approximately 2” long by 1 1/2” wide. Although this is a sticker, I felt that it would need a little extra glue to keep it in place, so I used gel medium to adhere it to my background. By the way, my background is a piece of felt covered with painted fusible web, stitched, and distressed with a heat gun.

After the glue had dried, I then put gel medium onto one section of the bird at a time and poured micro beads onto it. This process was repeated for each section. Sometimes I found that I had to redo parts of a section, or pick beads off the black outline as these sections are very tiny and my accuracy with my toothpick wasn’t always perfect.

Anyway, after a number of days, the bird was complete. I was very pleased with the outcome and that my fellow mixed media artists at FOG were impressed.                   Jan S.

January FOG Session and Embossing

At our FOG session in January we worked on encompassing our December Fun Foam embellishment into our journal page. Diane came with hers already embedded into her journal cover, so she was ahead of the rest of us.  Finished projects will be posted at a later date.

Our afternoon technique was working with rubber stamps and embossing powders. If it laid flat and could be stamped, it was embossed. It worked very well on most things; fabric, hand made papers and card stock, balsa wood business cards from Lee Valley Tools, metals and mica.

One of the neatest things we discovered was making a non metal substrate look like metal. First off stamp your rubber stamp in the VersaMark ink pad and set aside. To achieve this great metallic look on non metal surfaces first coat the surface with a clear VersaMark ink pad then liberally coat with a metallic coloured embossing powder (silver, gold, copper), tap off the excess powder and heat with a heat gun. Repeat this 3 - 4 times to lay down a thick layer of the embossing powders. As soon as you have completed the final layer of the embossing powder and before it cools, quickly stamp your rubber stamp into the surface. Just a note, do not reheat after it has been stamped or you will lose the imprint. Askme how I know :)

Top Left: Embossing on Mica, Top Right: Embossing on Hand Made Papers, Middle: Metallic Look on Card Stock; Bottom Left: Embossing on Lee Valley Balsa Business Cards, Bottom Right: Embossing on Painted Card Stock that has also been Dry Embossed in a Sizzix.

I think it was safe to say that we had a great time with the embossing powders and the possibilities for use in our mixed media projects.